16-year-old wins Bachauer piano competition

Sixteen-year-old Si Jing Ye was named the winner of the Gina Bachauer Young Artists Competition Saturday night.

Chinese-native Ye, who now lives in New York City, took home the $8,000 grand prize and gold medal after an intense night of piano performances by six international finalists. Ye performed Tchaikovsky's Concerto in B-flat Minor, op. 23, to win the gold.

Kenric Tam, 18, Los Altos Hill, Calif., won the silver medal and was awarded $6,000.

Third place went to Jonathan Floril, 18, Spain, who earned the bronze medal and $5,000. Hin Yat Mozar Tsang, 15, Hong Kong, came in fourth and took home $4,000 while Nansong Huang, 14, China, and Beatrice Rana, 15, Italy, placed fifth and sixth, winning $3,000 and $2,000 respectively.

The 10-member jury — consisting of chairman Douglas Humphrey of the United States, Rolf-Dieter Arens of Germany, Paola Bruni of Italy, Alan Chow of the United States, Mirian Conti of Argentina, Mieko Harimoto of Japan, Faina Lushtak of Russia, Thomas Schumacher of the United States, Zhe Tang of China and Veda Zuponcic of the United States — voted by secret ballot at the close of Saturday night's finals.

The finalists were selected from 29 competitors who performed during the five-day competition this past week in the Jeanne Wagner Theatre of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. And, unlike last weekend during the Junior Piano Competition, there were no setbacks.

Last Saturday, a power outage temporarily stalled the Junior Piano Competition finals, causing the Bachauer Foundation staff scrambling to relocate the pianists, audience and staff to the Libby Gardner Concert Hall.

"The ironic thing about last week was the fact that the power went as we were leaving to go to Libby Gardner Hall," said Bachauer Foundation spokesman Bryce Isaacson. "This week was much better and less chaotic for us in the fact that nothing bad happened. And the competition went on with out a hitch."

This year, the Bachauer Foundation scheduled the Junior and Young Artists Competitions to run consecutively, instead of alternating years. Paul Pollei, artistic director of the Gina Bachauer Foundation, told the Deseret News earlier this month the reason.

"There's the economy for using the jury for both (competitions)," he said.

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E-mail: scott@desnews.com